Darcey Bussell on how to dance The Sleeping Beauty's Lilac Fairy (The Royal Ballet) 

Nora Icy Crystal That was book series that I read and instantly loved as a child.🤗

Apparently it was phased out as bourgeois during the Soviet era, but the dancers (eg, Tamara Karsavina from the Imperial Ballet - Mariinsky) who had already left taught it to dancers who formed the Royal Ballet in the first half of the 20th C.

Not at all; you are absolutely right. Mime was phased out from ballet during the Soviet era, so all the important mime scenes from Petipa's ballets were omitted and roles that are supposed to have lots of mime and roles that are supposed to be character roles, e.g. the Lilac Fairy and Von Rothbart became purely dance roles, as seen in the Mariinsky and Bolshoi productions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake". The problem of the omission of mime is that the narrative/storytelling has been stripped from the ballets and they have become indulged in cold technique and symbolism.

+DarkDancer06 I generally agree with you on this point, cold technique and symbolism taking the place of mime. I’ll just parse your words out a little more. Ideally, what the Maryinksy/Kirov way of dancing the mime-less nineteenth century classics could show us is that great emotion and great drama can be transmitted through dancing alone. Certainly Natalia Makarova and Alla Ospienko, the greatest Kirov Odettes of their generation, showed us that the most riveting Odette-Odiles could be delivered with very minimal mime, and it was George Balanchine himself who once remarked, “How much story [do] you need?” I do wish however, that in coming to The West, Makarova had decided to tackle the mime from the lakeside scene in Act Two because I’m convinced she would have been wonderful in it. The problem, and the danger, with the Maryinksy-Kirov approach of pure dance as emotion is that in lesser hands, almost nothing in the way of narrative power is transmitted. I remember watching a dispiriting Kirov performance of Sleeping Beauty where the infant Aurora was passed around from hand to hand like a baton in a track and field relay race, like there was no sense or appreciation of human weight and preciousness. Of course, the lakeside scene with that first encounter between Siegfried and Odette will have neophyte ballet audience members scrabbling for their programmes, wondering what the Hell is going on. That’s where, as you aptly put it, cold technique and an ersatz-esoteric symbolism take hold, leaving audiences mystified and probably bored. I’ve always believed that generally, more dramatic explicitness in ballet only helps in the telling of the story.

Jane Aston Monica mason as Martha in Gisela

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NGwhYuGqc7I.html

Hi Liz. Thanks for your comment. The Royal Ballet tours internationally every summer and regularly tours the USA. Follow our social media channels for future announcements. In the meantime, there are regular international cinema broadcasts of Royal Ballet productions - you can find forthcoming broadcasts and participating cinemas near you here www.roh.org.uk/cinemas

@@RoyalBalletAndOpera I have seen the Royal Ballet at The Metropolitan Opera House in New York and they were unforgettable. A cut above!!!!

I did ballet for a while as a child and did an exam - but it was a free class. I eventually outgrew it and was ready for more advanced moves but you'd have to go to a private dance school for that and for some reason my parents didn't let me - maybe too expensive. I was upset by that and have always wished I'd continued to do it - am sure I would've enjoyed it as a hobby and would've liked to take part in productions. I still remember my little ballet outfit with the skirt, wraparound cardigan, shoes etc and going to a special shop to buy them. 😊 Instead I had to learn the piano (which I didn't end up minding) and tennis.

Gillian Taylor - heyyy